Teenager’s nonprofit raises thousands for research

16-year-old raises tens of thousands of dollars for juvenile-diabetes research

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Ever wonder how you can ramp up your charitable-giving efforts? Monica Oxenreiter, a 16-year-old in Pittsburgh, might provide some inspiration.

People who give $100 to the nonprofit Oxenreiter started can “buy” their ZIP code — and, on a bright-yellow map on her website that details donations nationwide, that ZIP code turns lime-green.

That’s the ingenious idea behind Oxenreiter’s Zip the Cure, a nonprofit she created to generate contributions for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, or JDRF. See ZiptheCure.com.

Call it youthful ingenuity. Oxenreiter launched the nonprofit in November 2009, when she was just 15. So far, Zip the Cure has raised more than $57,000 by “selling” 575 ZIP codes in 38 states. All of the money raised goes to JDRF. Check out Zip the Cure’s map here.

What helps motivate an already busy high-school student to start a nonprofit? Oxenreiter was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was just 13 months old. Ever since, she’s endured a minimum of four insulin injections a day, plus she must test her blood-sugar levels eight to 12 times daily, pricking her finger each time to draw blood.

The disease makes life complicated for any active teen. And it poses risks of serious health problems later in life.

“I think that the researchers are definitely close [to a cure], but insulin is not a cure as of this point,” said Oxenreiter, whose older brother also has juvenile diabetes. “But I think they are definitely close, and I hope to see a cure in my lifetime.”

How hard is it to start your own nonprofit? “It has definitely been a lot of work,” Oxenreiter said, though she said setting up the organization may have been easier than day-to-day operations, which include maintaining the website, updating the map, writing tax receipts and sending letters and thank-you notes (most of which Oxenreiter writes herself).

Plus, a network of volunteers nationwide, some of them teens like Oxenreiter, helps keep the operation going.

“It’s a really rewarding experience because you get to meet the most generous people,” she said. “It’s just amazing to be part of something that can possibly bring a cure for something that’s this important to me.”

Start-up ventures

Oxenreiter isn’t alone in her drive to create a nonprofit. “It’s not that uncommon for people set up local support groups to raise money for particular kinds of charities,” said Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

“It’s a way for people to mobilize friends, neighbors, relatives, fellow community citizens, to donate to a cause. Take a look at the American Cancer Society, the Red Cross — these look more like franchises than national organizations,” he said. “The nonprofit sector in the U.S. is very much a decentralized one. While we think of the big national charities, in many cases those national charities are fueled by more localized groups.”

Generally, someone interested in starting a nonprofit incorporates in her of his home state and then requests tax-exempt status from the IRS, Lenkowsky said. But if you’re not interested in tax-exempt status, those steps are unnecessary, he said.

“You and your colleagues at your organization can sit down over a beer tonight and say, ‘We want to create an association to do something for our community,’ ” he said. “If you don’t see any value in incorporating or getting a tax exemption, you don’t have to do it.

“A lot of groups just don’t feel the need to incorporate or seek tax exemption,” he said. These groups may not have significant assets, and their donors aren’t interested in a tax deduction. “As a practical matter, it doesn’t make much point to get incorporated.”

Student volunteerism hits new high

High-school students have ramped up their volunteer efforts in recent years: 85% of incoming college freshmen said they volunteered frequently or occasionally as high-school seniors, the highest percentage since 1984, when the question was first asked, according to an annual survey of freshmen entering four-year colleges, by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

And 31% of incoming college freshmen said there is a “very good chance” they will volunteer while in college, up from 17% who said that when the survey first asked the question in 1990. Another 41% said there is “some chance” they will volunteer.

Still, when you add in non-college-bound kids, the picture changes.

While more college freshmen report volunteering in high school, the portion of 16- to 24-year-olds overall who said they volunteer fell slightly over the past five years. Twenty-two percent of 16- to 24-year-olds volunteered at least once in the year ending September 2009, about flat from the prior year, and a drop from 24% in 2005, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2009 report on volunteering in the U.S.

“What we are finding is a big gap between volunteering by college-bound young people and volunteering by those who aren’t college-bound,” Lenkowsky said.

Among all age groups, the 16- to 24-year-olds had the lowest volunteer rate in 2009. The age group with the highest volunteer rate was 35- to 44-year-olds, of whom 32% reported volunteering at least once in the year ending September 2009, followed by 45- to 54-year-olds, of whom 31% volunteered, according to the survey.

Overall, the number of Americans who said they volunteered rose sightly in 2009: About 63.4 million people, or 27% of the U.S. population, helped out an organization, up from 61.8 million, or 26.4%, a year earlier. Read the BLS's survey on volunteerism in the U.S.

Competition drives charitable works — partly

The growth in volunteerism among college-bound students is driven partly by new high-school requirements for volunteer activity, and partly because savvy students know top colleges look for evidence of extensive volunteer activity on students’ applications.

“These students have got the message that college-admissions offices are interested not only in how you’re doing on SATs and grades but also extracurricular stuff,” Lenkowsky said.

As more students volunteer, the competition increases, encouraging some to take their charitable activities to a higher level, he said.

“Anecdotally, admissions officers are [saying they want to know], ‘Did you do anything exceptional in your volunteering?’ That could include forming an organization; it could be going on one of these one- or two-week trips to Uganda or someplace,” he said.

The students are sincere in wanting to help others, he said, and not “just calculating, but the message is out there that volunteering is good for getting into a good school.”

That’s no doubt true for many students — and it’s easy to make the argument it’s a positive trend, regardless of motives. But when you talk to kids like Oxenreiter, you know there’s something else at work.

For Oxenreiter, Zip the Cure is not a college-admissions ploy.

“I want to find a cure for diabetes,” she said. “It’s as simple as that.”

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